Find yourself in the electoral rolls

I registered with the ERO of my constituency and I was eagerly searching for my name in the rolls. My name was in disguise in the list. If you face the same problem finding your name in the list, here is the reason (that I heard from Jaagore):

Names are transliterated from Kannada to English.

So your name might not have the spelling that you expect. Search for your name with different combination of first few letters. You may find it. If you do, go, vote.

Here is the site for Karnataka: http://stg1.kar.nic.in/searchfinalroll_2009/

Thanks Jaagore for waking me up.

A’Satyam’

All that has been said and heard about Satyam reveals one satyam: Indian promoters still have more influence than they should actually have on the company. When a company grows beyond the size promoters can run it, it should be run by professional team and if the promoters are not professional enough, they should just remain non-executive or move on to other ventures. Satyam may reveal more ugly facts on the transperency of Indian corporate sector.

While my head says Ramalinga Raju is a 420, but by heart I still respect him as one of the brave entrepreneurs that took on the IT challenge. Apart from Satyam, the other charitable activities he does are of great help to common people. Generating 53,000 jobs is not an easy task in this country, and he is one of those tough guys who did it.

To my knowledge, all this can’t happen with out the knowledge of bada netas. Only time answers everything.

‘Satyam’eva jayate, for the sake of 53000 employees.

Happy new year 2009!

2008 was a mix of good and bad. There were good moments that we could cherish – the Olympics, the good cricket, IPL, Chandrayaan etc. And many bad things like recession, terrorist attacks, bad cricket, etc. A mix of many things, another passing year in our lives.

“The Moguls come, the Moguls go
The British come, the British go
We take the best and leave the rest
But we still eat curry, our women still wear saris
And we still live in tightly bound extended family units”

-Thomas Friedman

That’s India’s strength – we take the best and leave the rest. We need to learn from our mistakes, be strong and have hope in our hearts for the future, continue to do what we are best at. We gotta overcome many unique problems. We will, definitely.

Happy new year!

RBI is no joker

Yesterday midnight, some friends called me and said that there is a lot of mess going on in AP around ICICI Bank, after some TV channel exaggerated the losses made by ICICI bank. All the customers were afraid and queued up before the ATMs.

Are people crazy? There is RBI, there is government. At most, what could happen is a merger with some other bank, if ICICI screws up big time. Why are people queuing up before ATMs? No bank in this world can get cash for all its customers at once. And in a small town, how much cash can be there with a bank to distribute immediately?

I don’t know how much people (including me) are aware of the real financial situation. It’s the television channels that mislead people these days. Just as everything that appears on the Internet is true, everything told by news presenter is true. It’s just a news item for television channels, but it really plays with people’s emotions. Although, the sky is falling shouts that were around for an year now is clearly evident now. That’s true for the US. I don’t say Indian banks are insulated from that, but as the RBI says, Indian banks are well regulated and people need not panic looking at the global situation.

I’m not saying that hard earned money is not precious, but people need to think a little before running to the bank in the midnight, leaving their family at home. There are more important problems that we need to focus on. Go, stay alert and avoid serious loss to life that is caused by terrorists.

Worst experience with Nokia

I own a Nokia N73 phone. It came with a 2 Gig memory card, but that hardly worked after I bought it. I gave it at one of the nokia care centers in march. Still, I dint get the replacement for the card which was covered under warranty upto now. Be careful when you choose your nokia care center. Edgecom in Tippasandra Market, Bangalore is one of the worst in providing service. I thought I was the only unhappy customer of theirs, but there were lots more. Lot of people are complaining of their service. Don’t forget to choose a good service center. Dont be a fool like me.

Update: I got it back at last, after fighting with the center manager. Whoa, six months!

NDNC Registry – Get rid of unsolicited calls

Credit call people and tele marketers are very disturbing most of the times. They call when you are at work, when you are on vacation (roaming!) and whenever. They call again and again to disturb and can piss the hell out of you.

If you don’t want to receive automated calls or calls from telemarketers, just call your operator and ask to put your number on NDNC – National Do Not Call Registry (of India). It takes around 45 days for your number to go on to individual do not call registries of all telemarketers, but definitely you will not receive calls from any such people after that.

If you receive an unsolicited call even after 45 days, call your operator and talk to them in a high pitch that they dint put the number on NDNC inspite of requesting it, things will be set right. Operator will directly deal with those telemarketers. Or you can directly tell the telemarketer that you are on NDNC and will sue their company. You will never receive a call from that marketer again.

It’s a free service, obligatory for any mobile operator to provide – by law.

FutureBazaar – The Worst Shopping Experience

I love the business model of Big Bazaar, but their online counter part sucks. The site is not a great one, but not bad too. I tried to shop some t-shirts on the site, I think it doesn’t like me. Always throws Null Pointer Exceptions.

Well, Java – the language I program in, Null Pointer Exception is the last thing you want to display to the user. The worst thing is that after validating my credit card, the redirection from my Banker’s site to the merchant site failed. FutureBazaar has thrown a null pointer exception.

Hell with it, I’ve to file an application for refund now. Careful when you shop on future bazaar.

The week that has gone by

This week was fully packed. Learning things for new project, cleaning things up from old project and preparing training material to train people in Java. Preparing presentations is a boring and hectic stuff: shouldn’t make any errors, should know what I put on the slides, should do research on things, OMG! Somehow, managed to prepare slides and surprisingly presented in the decided duration.

Tomorrow, going to SecurityCamp at RSA, Bangalore. And should roam on sunday.